Self-efficacy and substance use outcomes for women in single gender versus mixed-gender group treatment

OBJECTIVE: This study examined baseline self-efficacy as a moderator of outcomes comparing women receiving either the Women's Recovery Group (WRG), a new manualized group treatment for substance use disorders combining single-gender group composition and women-focused content, or Group Drug Counseling (GDC), an empirically supported mixed-gender group treatment. METHODS: To understand the relationship of baseline scores of abstinence self-efficacy measured by the Drug-Taking Confidence Questionnaire (DTCQ) to outcome, we included the interaction of group by phase by continuous DTCQ scores in the outcome analyses. Women were split into groups of high versus low abstinence self-efficacy based on the clinical cutoff score of 80 on DTCQ. RESULTS: We found a significant 3-way interaction effect of treatment condition, time, and baseline DTCQ scores on drinking days and days of any substance use per month. Women in WRG had greater reduction in substance use from baseline to post-treatment than women in GDC, and women in WRG with low self-efficacy had the best outcomes overall. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that women with low self-efficacy may have enhanced treatment outcomes in a single-gender substance use treatment group.     

Finding the Balance: Intoxication and Consent

Sexual offences in England and Wales have had a dramatic reimagining in the last 15 years, with the Sexual Offences Act 2003 establishing not only the boundaries of the most heinous of offences such as rape, but also defining one of the most important elements; consent. This article seeks to explore the problems that surround establishing if legally valid consent has been given, with particular regard for cases where voluntary intoxication takes centre stage. The problem that often arises is the question on whether or not an intoxicated victim had the capacity to consent, or establishing if she did consent when memory of the event is hazy, possibly from both parties. Using comparative analysis with other jurisdictions and their take on the offence of rape, the author seeks to discover if the current rules are sufficient to fit within twenty-first century western culture. The victim will be referred to as ‘she’, although the law here and all situations discussed are equally applicable to male rape.

     

Considering Fair Use: DMCA’s Take Down & Repeat Infringers Policies

Courts have recently clarified some aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbor system, yet other aspects remain hazy. In this haze, ISPs are incentivized to over-block content, and copyright holders are allowed to give a narrow, subjective reading of a user’s fair use. Subjectively, copyright holders can, in good faith, hold objectively unreasonable views about fair use. The asymmetry between copyright holders’ rights and remedies and users’ rights and remedies threatens socially valuable speech and creates a chilling effect. And the risk of extra-judicial termination of Internet access under a vague and variable repeat infringers policies threatens fundamental First Amendment interests. Policy changes are proposed to harness fair use considerations to protect First Amendment interests in the digital sphere. The calculus and consequence for sending takedown notices should be recalibrated. By curbing copyright overreach and minimizing the chilling effect, the potential for robust exchanges over new communication technologies can be realized.     

Stipends in Volunteer Civic Service: Inclusion,Retention, and Volunteer Benefits

What is the role of stipends as an institutional facilitator in volunteer civic service? By examining the relationship of stipend receipt to volunteer diversity, time commitment, and perceived benefits from a longitudinal study of older adults serving in Experience Corps, this article assesses stipend status relative to volunteer sociodemographic characteristics, motivations, intensity and duration of time served, and volunteers’ self‐reported benefits. The findings underscore how stipends may promote participant diversity. In particular, stipended older adult volunteers serve for longer periods of time, but their motivations for serving do not differ. Stipended volunteers report higher perceived benefits than nonstipended volunteers. The results suggest that stipends may leverage wider inclusion, increase retention, and contribute to other benefits, but additional research is needed using more controlled and comparative designs.     

Analysis of forensic soil samples via high-performance liquid chromatography and ion chromatography

Traditional forensic soil comparisons are performed via physical and/or chemical examinations of color, texture, and mineral content, leaving any organic- or water-soluble fractions unexamined. This study uses high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ion chromatography (IC) to assess the qualitative and quantitative variation in these fractions of soil. Soil samples (n=120) were collected over the course of 3 weeks from urban, suburban, and rural locations in and around Lansing, MI. Additional samples from six of these locations (two urban, two suburban, and two rural) were collected once a week for 10 weeks for temporal analysis. Nine additional samples, equally spaced over a 1 m(2) grid, from these same six locations were collected for spatial analyses. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the resultant chromatograms separated the 120 samples into 10 groups by HPLC and 23 groups by IC. This study shows that using HPLC and IC to analyze the organic- and water-soluble fractions of soil can successfully discriminate samples. Quantitative analysis of the results eliminates some false inclusions by providing further differentiation of samples. The results of this study indicate that adding HPLC and IC analyses to traditional forensic soil analysis schemes can improve overall sample differentiation. The methods used in this study were also able to detect both qualitative and quantitative variations in soil over a relatively small geographic area. This demonstration of soil heterogeneity underscores the importance of the collection of a representative known sample population when assessing a forensic soil comparison. Significant temporal variation was also demonstrated over the course of 10 weeks of sampling; however, samples were found to be consistent over shorter periods of time. Baseline levels of inorganic anions were determined via IC; these levels may be useful in assessing the significance of anions detected in soil from cases involving low explosives.     

Reexamining Causes and Consequences: Does Administrative Intensity Matter for Organizational Performance?

ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between organizational structure (size and complexity) and administrative intensity and, subsequently, the effect of administrative intensity on organizational performance in the context of four-year institutions of higher education in the United States between 2003 and 2009. Organizational size has a negative effect on administrative intensity and supports the notion of economies of scale. Size and complexity also interact such that complexity has a greater effect on total administrative intensity in larger organizations. While administrative intensity has a nonlinear relationship with degree productivity, suggesting a tipping point of 30% total administration, it has little direct effect on graduation rates.     

China’s international socialization of Caribbean state-society complexes: Trinidad and Tobago as a case study

ABSTRACT

Using the case study of Trinidad and Tobago, this article analyzes the process of reciprocal international socialization that allows Beijing to construct a cognitive and normative space conducive to a new regional order in the Caribbean which should be politically friendly, economically profitable, and socially open to its government, companies, and citizens. We argue that there has been a shift in the identity of Trinidad’s state-society complex due to the influence of China’s very visible political, economic, and social conditionalities. Their impact on political elites (which is reflected in government discourse and actions) and on the society at large (as shown by interviews with 30 Trinidadian nationals) is analyzed in order to show that Type I, ‘role playing’ socialization has been reached. However, frustration within Trinidad’s society with the domestic effects of China’s economic and social conditionalities clearly limits the potential for the evolution toward the more advanced Type II socialization exemplified, in the same region, by the Soviet-Cuban relationship. This suggests that, at least in the near future, key features of the Chinese approach incompatible with its self-proclaimed win-win nature will prevent Beijing from upgrading its status to that of a decisive socializer in the Caribbean.     

Virtual Babes: gender,archetypes and computer games

Thus a word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider “unconscious” aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained — Carl Gustav Jung.     

The sublime and the cultures of the extreme: An exploration

Abstract

The article traces the relationship between the concept of the traditional sublime and the contemporary cultures of the extreme and their fascination with unlimitation. It is asked to what degree the aesthetic category of the sublime, generally defined as a ‘formlessness’, can assist in exploring and making sense of the cultures of the extreme. The cultures of the extreme are analysed by means of three tropes, namely the ecstasy of speed, the immersion into immediacy, and the shrinking of the natural landscape. By utilising these three tropes or hermeneutical tools, the author attempts to show how these events typify the contemporary obsession with extremes, and can indeed be likened to a pseudo-sublime or kitsch sublime.